Archive for josh donaldson

It’s that wonderful time of year where preliminary positional rankings starting pouring out for the upcoming season. Because I needed another reason to look like a fool by the end of it. The third base position opens 2017 with plenty of intrigue, with a couple of newish faces to the mix and one notable name departing for a new position. Let’s all pour one out for Matt Carpenter. My goal is to be far more consistent on the rankings side in 2017, which means more opportunity for folks to ponder, “Just what in the world is this guy thinking?”

Let’s get to it with some cleverly named tiers:

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When it comes to the third base position, we already know a lot of what to expect in 2017. In a sense, we largely know who will reside at the top and serve as an upper tier fantasy asset, while it’s also relatively apparent who can provide steady production at the position as a secondary choice in upcoming drafts. It’s almost somewhat black and white in a sport that is almost never just black and white.

But beyond my incessant rambling, there’s the “first full year” factor (note: I referred to him as a rookie multiple times because I lacked coffee and common sense this morning), something that you can just barely adequately prepare for. In this case, though, there’s one predominant exception: Alex Bregman. The Houston Astros product figures to be an intriguing option as that first-full-year guy that folks will be all over in the early rounds of drafts. A lot of that is justified, but any time you’re talking about a player coming into his first full season in the big leagues, there is at least some reason for a certain level of apprehension.

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With all of the offensive talent oozing from the third base position, it’s easy to forget to appreciate just how dominant some of the upper tier players at the hot corner actually are. In no case may this be more true than that of Josh Donaldson. Not that folks don’t recognize that Donaldson is one of the premier players in baseball, but at the same time, it’s easy to overlook just how good he’s actually be in the last couple of years. The lull and lack of news in January gives us a chance to explore just that.

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We haven’t done a good ol’ fashioned rankings since the start of the season, so the All-Star Break seems like the perfect time to re-examine some of the selections that were made in the initial 2016 set. Obviously things have changed, but given that it’s the middle of July, nobody is surprising us anymore. We know largely who is who and what they bring to the table, while others have dropped off due to positional eligibility. While there’s still room for bounce back or decline, we know where we stand at the season’s midway point.

While these rankings still remain somewhat subjective, based on the individual elements I tend to look at, neither Kris Bryant or Jake Lamb ended up no. 1, so the bias may not have shone through as much as it otherwise could have. Enjoy the rest of your break before the stove starts to heat up.

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As we approach the end of the first month of the 2016 Major League season, there’s obviously plenty to dissect. From a third base perspective, we’ll unpack a lot of that when we get to the first set of real, actual, less-leaning-upon-conjecture rankings in the coming days. But nothing says we can’t look at some things just a touch early.

For the most part, the top guys have been the top guys. If there was a “Stock Right Where It Was Expected to Be” category, these guys would fit the bill. Manny Machado leads the category, while Nolan Arenado and Josh Donaldson aren’t too far behind. Kris Bryant is right in the mix as well, keeping all of the top tier players from those initial rankings in that upper tier, just perhaps with some reordering. Beyond that top tier, though, there’s certainly going to be some shakeup. Some guys have emerged, some guys have fallen off the map almost completely, and some guys are just there. Looking at some of these stocks will give us a better idea of what the next set of rankings could look like.

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Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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On 9/3, I posted Adjusting Fantasy Value with expected (x)BABIP and xHR. These were used to adjust batting average, OBP, SLG and OPS for your different leagues’ formats.

Based on xBABIP, Michael Brantley and Anthony Rendon jumped in value sandwiching in Mike Trout as the top 3 adjusted Fantasy Values for standard 5×5 formats (HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG).

Here, I’ll attempt to verify the BABIP potential for standard 5×5 leagues. I am therefore using column 2 (sum of the 5×5 descriptive/actual z-scores: HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG) and comparing it to column 3 (sum of the 5×5 expected z-scores: xHR, SB, R, RBI and xAVG). SB, R and RBI are not adjusted even though they should be so consider this a way to play down the overall effect.

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The not terribly accurate “second half” starts today. If you’re anything like me, the All-Star game doesn’t do a helluva lot to satisfy the need to fill up those multiple box scores and follow the ridiculous number of rosters I have in fantasy baseball. So thank goodness the break is over and we can move on to more important things other than whether a pitcher not-so-gracefully curtseyed to a living legend. Who cares, we have titles to win here.

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Head over to the leaderboards, sort by third basemen over the last 30 days and filter by line drive rate and a really unexpected thing happens. There are 29 qualified third basemen on that list. Dead last is the leading All-Star vote getter at the hot corner in Josh Donaldson, who has a 6% line drive rate over the last month. Six percent. If that didn’t surprise enough, at the top of this list is none other than maybe-back-from-purgatory David Freese, who has hit almost 35% line drives over the last month. Go figure.

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I don’t really know why I’ve entitled my series of columns here “Fantasy Baseball Existentialism.” I think it was because I knew I wouldn’t really say much about fantasy baseball even though it’s a fantasy baseball column in theory, and so I added the word existentialism to like try to tip people off that this would ultimately be about, well, not fantasy baseball really. I don’t know. I’ve read two books by Camus so I don’t really know much about existentialism yet either.

So today we’re going to talk about Josh Donaldson. If you didn’t draft him in fantasy, you probably made a mistake. You should trade for him, I’d say. Swing a deal for him or keep him if you’ve got him; dude is legit.

I took Evan Longoria early and never even thought about drafting Donaldson because last year was obviously not sustainable. I figured the A’s would regress some this  year and fall behind Texas in the AL West. I assumed Donaldson would fall off in a big way from his near-8-win season in 2013. That had to have been a fluke, right? A guy who hits .232/.280/.386 over his first 328 big league plate appearances without having dominated in the upper minors isn’t going to sustain a .301/.384/.499 slash line. That absolutely had to be his age-27 peak season, and the rest of his career would be a downhill slide from that epoch.

On July 8, 2008, with the A’s five games back of the Angels despite possessing a much better run differential (+63 to +24), Billy Beane flipped Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin to the first-place Cubs for Donaldson, Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton, and Eric Patterson. Nine days later, Beane traded Joe Blanton to Philadelphia for prospects Adrian Cardenas, Matt Spencer, and Josh Outman. Six years later, the fruit of those reloading efforts have paid off in a big way via J-Don. Do they actually call him that? Probably not. And so but you trade for a bunch of guys and maybe most of them don’t work out as you hoped but that’s okay if you can get a gamer like Donaldson to build a championship baseball team around.

On Wednesday night at whatever it is they’re calling the Oakland Coliseum these days (O.co Coliseum) with the A’s trailing Detroit 1-0, Donaldson jumped on a first pitch changeup from Joe Nathan and unloaded it down the left-field line for a game-winning three-run homer. After a slow start, Donaldson’s slash line is up to .276/.370/.529. He’s already been worth three wins. Since the start of last season, only Mike Trout has been more valuable than Donaldson.

Rather than regressing, Donaldson is flourishing. Rather than regressing, the A’s just keep on winning. They have the second-best record in baseball one year after winning 96 games. The year before that, they won 94 games. They’re on pace for 96 wins this season. Their +100 run differential is by far the best in the game.

Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for a fall that’s never coming with these guys. Maybe it’s time to stop doubting Donaldson, who has now sustained a star-level performance for a season and two months. Maybe it’s time to stop doubting Billy Beane, who has managed to build a roster that appears well on its way to a third straight AL West crown despite one of the game’s smallest payrolls. Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin go down for the season with elbow injuries and Dan Straily gets demoted due to ineffectiveness, and yet the A’s 6th, 7th, and 8th starters slide right in there and pitch effectively.

I mean who in the world does Jesse Chavez think he is? Why is a 30-year-old journeyman with a career 5.48 ERA suddenly pitching like a top-of-the-rotation starter?

Back to Donaldson, I happened to be at last night’s game, though I didn’t show up until the sixth inning. My co-workers and I were going to the game to celebrate the departure of a guy who quit. If you’ve ever had a job you hated, you know what I’m talking about when I use the word “celebrate.” I mean I guess compared to war, slavery, abject poverty, violence, and other miseries in life, having a middle class office job you don’t like isn’t so bad. If you can afford to go to an A’s game, you probably shouldn’t complain too much even if all you actually do is petulantly whine all the time.

And so but when I showed up to a baseball game in the sixth inning I knew right then and there that somehow my life really had gotten off track. I mean not even a lowly Dodgers fan would show up that late. But again, if you’ve ever had a job that was pretty miserable, you can relate to over-indulging on the honey mead and losing track of time and the truly important things in life like baseball. I don’t know why baseball matters, but intuitively I know it really does, and to feel the game slipping away from me is truly frightening. If I no longer love baseball, am I capable of loving anything? Or is it just that in this Year of the 99-Cent Taco, I’d rather read Infinite Jest and consume literature instead of sport? Doing anything besides consuming, after all, is clearly out of the question. In a late-capitalist society one is defined solely via their consumption, no?

And so but there was a lot of resentment festering at this A’s game. Some of us were probably envious of our escaping co-worker. Some of us were mad at ourselves for having gotten to the game so late. Then, as Craig Gentry led away from first and Coco Crisp from third, and I wondered whether Gentry would attempt to steal the bag to put the winning run in scoring position, Donaldson delivered the dinger that would momentarily recall me to baseball, and to life. Donaldson stole victory from the jaws of defeat and provided the intoxication of winning to a group of co-workers lost in the modern world, badly in need of something greater than themselves. Can remarkable greatness of this thrifty Oakland team save the lost souls of the Bay Area? Can they teach us what it is to love the game once more?

With one of the game’s truly elite players in Donaldson, maybe this will be the year Beane’s stuff works in the playoffs. Josh Donaldson, elite player? That seems weird to write, but WAR don’t lie. As I recall Donaldson’s game-winning home run sailing into the bleachers, I can’t help but think: has Billy Beane created the perfect entertainment?